Look, I hate iTunes more than just about anything, but Apple understands design. People complaining that it is in the “uncanny valley” of gadgets – too big to be as portable as the iPhone, just big enough to be clumsy in your hands – don’t get it. This is the ultimate messenger-bag mobile device: it combines the sheer usability of the iPhone with the additional power and application flexibility of a laptop.

I’ve already seen a few complaints from people who don’t like that Apple’s application standard turns the tablet future into a closed-book sort of scenario, but frankly this was more or less inevitable: Apple’s the only company bothering to design with mass usability in mind3 and if they’re going to price their products anywhere near affordability (and honestly, the iPad’s price points are really stupid cheap for what it is) they need to be able to profit off the applications in order to make back their initial investment until such time as the rest of the pack catches up.

So, yeah. I’m in. Even with iTunes and the fact that “iPad” is a terrible, terrible name. The keyboard dock for people like me who hate the screen-keyboard is just icing on the cake.4

Also, think what this could do for comics! Just imagine: in 2015 or so, Marvel or DC will debut their iPad comics app! (Yeah, you wish I was joking about that, don’t you.)

Well, more accurately, “buy me one,” since I dunno how I’ll afford one any time soon. [↩]

Also, I live in Canada, so presumably Rogers or whoever will take nine months to put together a deal for the 3G models and then it will be ass-rapingly expensive. [↩]

As opposed to marketing to geeks, which is what just about every other mobile computing/phone company does for their new-edge products. [↩]

If they add a tricked-out stylus at some point that will be the milk with which you drink the cake. [↩]

That’s a really terrible fucking name, though. Didn’t Apple used to be kind of synonymous with creativity and imagination and original thinking? Oh, sorry, I meant iCreativity and iImagination and aOriginal iThinking. Look at me, ma, I’m Steve Jobs! I’ma knit me up some iSocks!

I am a senseless Mac addict and for once I’m pretty happy to be underwhelmed by a product. With Jobs saying “this is the most important thing I’ve worked on,” I was ready to have my crotch explode today, and I can’t afford something even this reasonable right now. So this saves me a little marital strife, actually. I’ll start saving for the G3, which will probably kill me.

I could see Marvel doing something pretty quickly. They launched with PlayStation Comics on PSP a few months back, even if the selection there isn’t even as good as their Digital Comics Unlimited thingy. And we shouldn’t dismiss how cozy Apple is with Marvel’s new corporate overlords.

If the iPad ends up supporting Flash 6, then Marvel will already be there, albeit in a cruddy have-to-be-connected-and-use-a-web-browser way. Although that’s a big “if” – Flash isn’t on the iPhone/iPod Touch, and I’m not sure why Apple would change their minds about it for this.

I’d put Marvel’s odds within the year at maybe 50%. DC’s odds for the same timeframe? Let’s be generous and say 2%.

The iPhone already has a couple of comics apps. I grabbed a few Boom! titles off of it and I hear they stock Marvel now.

It wouldn’t surprise me if they were already working on the big screen version of these. Then it becomes a matter of convincing companies to get with the program, and then our dream of sucking comic books out of the air to read on our jetpack commute to work will be reality.

1. It doesn’t look like I can type on it. I mean, I can peck out a message if I put some effort into it, but with a curved back, I’m going to be cradling the iPad in one hand and pecking with the other. That’s nothing compared to being able to go nearly full speed on my Eee with its 92% sized full QWERTY keyboard. And if I can’t snag notes, why bother with it?

2. Even if I could type on it, that’s all I could be doing. Not typing and keeping a digital textbook open. Not typing and listening to music. Not typing and anything else because, ha ha, it doesn’t support two things at once. Fantastic.

Maybe you’ll be able to eek out 10 hours of video, but for $500, I can get an Eee with 6 hours of battery life that does a lot more, plus a spare battery to bump it up to 12 hours, along with running more than one program at a time. Thanks, Apple, but I’m cool with what I’ve got.

You do realize they’ve basically made a real-world version of the tablets they’ve used in Star Trek: Next Generation? Slap a Starfleet logo on the backside and 50 million geeks will sign up… well other than the 20 million geeks who buy anything Apple…

Man, I hate when Apple rolls out some new thing like this. Everyone talks about it and I don’t keep up with this stuff, so when people ask you what you think you come off as the guy who’s thinks he’s cool because he doesn’t care. I *swear* I am not affecting an anti-Apple stance in some misguided attempt at edginess, I just am nonplussed by things that I do not understand and can not afford anyway.

No multitasking really kills it for me. If you make a unitasking device it should be best in show. If you make a device that does a lot of things well, the least I should be able to get from it is for it to do more than one of them at a time.

I always appreciate when Apple puts out a new, ‘visionary’ design… because then other companies don’t have to spend the time, effort, and hype designing and marketing their fantastic second-gen versions of the thing, so the off-brand improved version is far, far better a piece of gear and much cheaper.

I always appreciate when Apple puts out a new, ‘visionary’ design… because then other companies don’t have to spend the time, effort, and hype designing and marketing their fantastic second-gen versions of the thing, so the off-brand improved version is far, far better a piece of gear and much cheaper.

Exactly! I’ll just wait for a MasterG or LG or some other company’s version of this.

This is certainly an interesting development. This is the first time I know that Apple has consciously created a product that is completely worthless and without any real uses whatsoever, and markets it as the next big step in technological evolution. They’re going all in a two and a seven. Depending on how well they do, we may finally be rid of the illusion that “quality” or “value” means anything in the brain of the Homo Sapiens.

This isn’t a magical device, but it IS a magical marketing push. Trying to make people feel privileged to be allowed to pay the double price for a directly worse version of a product they already own (iPad = iPod Touch, without portability) is unprecedentedly ballsy.

The dealbreakers for me are lack of flash (i.e. streaming audio/video) support and lack of camera. Also, it would be nice if Apple would support non-QT video formats in their devices, but I realize that would be kind of like asking the earth to start revolving backwards for a change.

I just wanted one to feel like I was a doctor in a futuristic movie where they have touch-screen charts and they tap away with one hand on strange, alien symbols to make it look like they’re actually doing something.

I loves me some Stephen Fry, but his views on computers are rather astonishing at times, given how much he appears to research other topics. It sounds like his mind was made up in 1995 and since then how shiny something is that has anything resembling an internet hookup is the standard he measures by.

You can get a stylus for the iPhone/iTouch through ThinkGeek – I imagine it’s the same screen type, so it should work.

eBook reader only through iBookstore. No word about loading your own books/PDFs
Actually, there are already apps for the iPhone/iTouch that handle this. Bookshelf lets you load them off your local WiFi network (and some other places I believe) and there’s a Kindle app.

The “No Camera” is weird to me since they’re proud of the photo app built in. Maybe they’re planning on giving it better BlueTooth and selling Cameras, or making the WiFi work directly with the Eye-Fi cards (sold at Apple stores).

The data plan price… talk to AT&T but they’re idiots (I can’t tether to a laptop with my iPhone? WTF?)

This is NOT a laptop killer. It’s not really a netbook killer, nor a Kindle killer, but there will be those that would buy one of these instead of a netbook or Kindle. This is designed as an oversized PDA – for those that need to walk around alot and read things and occasionally enter things, not enter them in mass. My best example is doctors in a clinic, waitstaff or floor sales people, warehouse inventory (well, if it had a barcode reader…) – stuff like that.

I wonder if they’ll have a Newton emulator…

Oh, and I’ve seen the designation PAD for Personal Access Device in SciFi stories before…

Ok, it’s only loosely related to the iPad, but I’d love to hear your views, MGK, about the Macmillan/Amazon kerfluffle. Is Amazon engaged in price fixing? Is Macmillan setting the groundwork for a future anti-trust case for the big 6 publishers? Is John Scalzi right?